The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1887-12-31
TWADDLE ON THE HALP-sHELL.

TWADDLE ON THE HALF-SHELL.
Hon. James Russell Lowell must have
felt little strange presiding over a banquet
at which General Corse, Democratic post
master of Boston; Hon. Patrick A. Collins,
Democratic Congressman from the same CITY,
and other Democratic Representatives and
Senators were the principal speakers. Mr.
Lowells best literary work has been done in
lampooning the principles and policy of the
Democracy. and he owes his only public
honors to a Republican President Free
trade was the common sympathy that brought
him and the Democrats together-that, and
eulogy of Mr.. Cleveland. In the latter Mr..
Lowell easily surpassed the rest. It should
seem that he might have found language in
which to declare his approval of tree trade,
and even his mugwumpian admiration OF
Cleveland without pronoun cling him 'the
best representative OF the higher type of
Americanism that we have seen since Lincoln
was snatched from U.S." Comparisons are
odious Mr.. Lowell might, at least, have
refrained from casting slur on the Repub-
lican President who appointed him Minister
to Spain, and who, by transferring linn to
England gave him an opportunity
to sit at the feet of the great
teachers of free trade and absorb the doctrine
in its uaadulterated purity. The fact that
President Hayes appointed Mr. Lowell to
these distinguished positions does not neces-
sarily prove that he is great man, but the
at,,ifo hic
benefactor proves that Mr. Lowell is an un-
grateful one. But it is not alone President
Hayes who, in the opinion of Mr.. Lowell, is
outranked and overshadowed by the present
occupant of the White House. When the
mugwumpian poetlaureate referred to Mr..
Cleveland 'the best representative of the
higher type of Americanism that we have
seen since Lincoln was snatched from US, he
could not have forgotten that his sweeping
comparison also embraced Presidents Grant
Americans who have not occupied the pres;-
Dental chair. It has been commonly supposed
that General Grant, whose great deeds were
only equaled by his great modesty, and who
stood before kings their unabashed equal,
furnished pretty good type of A mericanism.
And many have thought that the career of the
brilliant and accomplished Garfield, whose
greatness was achieved, not thrust upon him,
was an imposing one for young Americans to
emulate. But Mr.. Lowell finds that the man
from Buffalo who plays against fortune with
loaded dice, and who owes all the distinction
he has achieved to what his friends call
'sClevelands luck" who was nominated for
President because his party deemed his name
a good one to juggle with; who was elected
under voluntary pledge to serve but one
term, and who is now bending every effort to
secure elections; whose efforts at oratory
have been the laughing-stoc of the country,
and whose latest effort at craftsmanship is
likely to prove disastrous to his party and the
country just in proportion his advice is
adopted-this is the man whom Mr.. Lowell
finds to be the best representative of the high
er type of Americanism since Lincoln. Mr.
Lowell would have better pleased the Southern
Democrats present at the banquet if he had
not even excepted Lincoln, and his free-trade
admirers in England if he had said that all
other Americans shrank to nothingness and
even the name of Washington paled its inef-
fectual fires before that of Cleveland. While
he was about it he should have gone the full
length of mugwump adulation.